web design – social media – website maintenance

Tag Archives: twitter

You’ve got 140 characters to get your message across the right way, the first time. If you’re just starting out or not sure how to “twitter”, then this post is for you! Here are a few tips to make the best of your Twitter time.

@Mentions

Mentioning others in your tweets gets you noticed more. However, when you begin a tweet with @, the only people that see the tweet are those that follow both you and the user you mentioned. By placing a period before the @mention, everyone will see it. The alternative is to place the @mention at the end of the tweet, but you then risk the mention being dropped on a retweet. An @mention at the beginning means low visibility, but a period before the mention means high visibility.

Keep it Short

Twitter is fast paced, it’s meant to be read quickly, so keep to the point using as few words as possible. Think ahead to retweets. The longer your Twitter username is, the fewer characters you should use in your tweet. Make your tweets easy to retweet, keeping in mind that a retweet will add RT @username: to your original tweet. In my case, (I wasn’t being very smart with my Twitter name!) a retweet is going to add 21 characters! RT @bestdamnwebgirl: (Don’t forget the space after the colon!)

Shorten the Link

For the most part, the Twitter client you use will automatically shorten links for you, or Twitter will do it as well. Bit.ly will allow you to customize the link a bit so you can grab attention a bit better

#Hashtags

#Hashtags are used to categorize tweets and make them a tad easier to search. Hashtags are Twitter. If you see a hashtag followed by text anywhere, you know to go to Twitter and search for it. While you can search for any phrase on Twitter, the hashtags brings it all home. Hashtag anything, anywhere and you are driving peeps to Twitter.

Pictures Rule

As with everywhere else, images get noticed. Attach relevant photos to your tweets occasionally and you’re likely to get more response. We are visual people. We are more likely to share a photo than just a text quote. Give the people what they want- something to look at every once in awhile.